I think that a change will come over us. At the North, you
have heard the wind, at midnight, after a warm rain, in winter, haul out
to the north-west, and you know what a piping time we then have of it,
and how the clear cold air, the next morning, and the bright sun, excite
and cheer us. There has been with us for a long time at the North, in
our political and religious atmosphere, a warm, foggy, unwholesome
drizzle of weak, fanatical feeling, with now and then gusts of wind and
scud,--a kind of weather most abhorred by mariners. But we hope that the
wind is changing, and that "fair weather cometh out of the North." God
will not suffer us to live long, we earnestly hope, in this condition of
misunderstanding and hatred, for it would be contrary to his established
laws that we should long continue to be one nation with such feelings
toward each other. The change will be in the North. Slavery will come to
be regarded as not in itself a sin, and the evils incident to it will be
left for those immediately concerned to bear them or seek their removal.
Or, if we become divided, the Southern section may extend its conquests
into the whole southern part of the American continent, and spread the
institution of slavery over that vast domain.
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